LingSync Glosses

being updated constantly, stay tuned

General Guidelines

Gloss everything--no defaults!

• This is mainly to make search easier and more intuitive. If we had, for instance, “animate” as the understood default person and only glossed inanimate morphology as such, it would be very difficult to get a datalist of all animate words. Having no default glossing means that all our glosses will be very explicit and therefore easy to search.
• This will be painful at the start, but once we have enough data in there, LingSync will autogloss and make our lives much easier! Hang in there.
• If you have an affix that affects the category of the word to which it attaches, mark the original word's category as well as that of the affix. (ie: plamu 'salmon.AN' and plamu-ei 'salmon.AN-of.IN')
  • However, if you have an affix that reflects the category of the original word, do not redundantly mark both for the same animacy. (ie: plamu 'salmon.AN' and plamu-g 'salmon-AN.PL')

When in doubt, don’t parse it out!

• Try to avoid making null morphemes unless there's very, very strong evidence for them. Pass it by someone else's eyes first, too!

In general, try to be faithful to the surface form when drawing morpheme boundaries. (ie match the morpheme line to the utterance line as closely as possible)

• You can use comments to discuss phonology if you think there is a predictable process going on.
• One exception is the palatalization of 't' at morpheme boundaries. Throughout LingSync we will assume that t -> j / _-i, so it is safe to have the utterance and morpheme lines different here.

Order functional abbreviations (separated by dots) as you would say them out loud, e.g...

• AN.PL
• PRES.IND

Verbs...

• if you can identify a verb's theme sign, indicate it as being VAI, VTA, VII or VTI as appropriate
• if you cannot identify the theme sign, don't worry about it. You can include it with dots (i.e. 'cook.VTI-3'), or put it in the tags for that datum (tagged: 'VTI'), and someone can come back to it later with an analysis.
• to be continued

New Datum Fields

Current:

• utterance
• morpheme
• gloss
• translation

Proposed:

• utteranceType: this field allows users to specify whether the Datum is a lone word such as NOUN or VERB, or a full SENTENCE or a STORYPART.
  • contender for a tag as well, rather than a Datum Field.
• utteranceNumber: this field allows users to number a Datum to fit within a story, such as 1/20, 2a/20, 2b/20 etc.
  • NOT contender for a tag
• conjugationType: this field allows users to specify whether a verb is of the first conjugation, second conjugation, etc. (helpful for users who are learning Mi'gmaq and want to find more straightforward patterns.)
  • contender for a tag as well, rather than a Datum Field.

Tags used

Tags should generally be not the same as glossable morphemes.

Current:

• needs translation/needs glossing
  • use these tags if you're unsure of the translation or gloss you've used
• preverb stacking
  • when you have more than two or three preverbs on a verb

Proposed:

• NPI
• Q wh
• Q yesno
• modal

Abbreviations

(following Leipzig Glossing Conventions)

ABBREVIATION	terminology	notes
0	third person (inanimate)
1	first person
12	first person inclusive ('we (me & you)')
13	first person exclusive ('we (me & another)')
2	second person
3	third person (proximate, i.e. 's/he')
4	third person (obviative, i.e. 'her/his mother'
ABSN	absentive
ADV	adverb(ial)
AN	animate
ANTIP	antipassive
APPL	applicative
BEN	benefactive
CAUS	causative
CLF	classifier
COMP	complementizer
COMPL	completive
COND	conditional
CONJ	conjunct
COP	copula
DECL	declarative
DEM	demonstrative
DIR	direct
DIST	distal
DISTR	distributive
DU	dual
EMPH	emphatic
EXCL	exclusive
EXT.PL	extended plural	(provisional term contrasting with SG, DL, PL, to mean a number equivalent of 'multitude')
FOC	focus
FUT	future
IMP	imperative
IN	inanimate
INCL	inclusive
IND	indicative
INF	infinitive
INST	instrumental
INT	intonation
IPFV	imperfective
IMPS	impersonal
IRR	irrealis
LOC	locative
N-	non-
NEG	negation, negative
NMLZ	nominalizer, nominalization
OBJ	object
OBL	oblique
OBV	obviative	see obviation
PART	particle
PASS	passive
PFV	perfective
PL	plural
POSS	possessive
PLP	pluperfect
PRF	perfect
PRES	present
PROG	progressive
PROH	prohibitive
PROX	proximal, proximate
PST	past
PURP	purposive
Q	question, question marker/particle
QUOT	quotative
RECP	reciprocal
REFL	reflexive
RES	resultative
SBJV	subjunctive
SG	singular
SUBJ	subject
SUBV	subordinative
TOP	topic
VAI	intransitive verb with animate subject)
VII	intransitive verb with inanimate subject)
VOC	vocative
VTA	transitive verb with animate subject & animate object
VTI	transitive verb with animate subject & intransitive object